


Somebody To Find You

by stayawake



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alana's trying you guys, Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, No one deserves to disappear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 16:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18210596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayawake/pseuds/stayawake
Summary: "Because I know what it's like to feel invisible. Just like Connor. To feel invisible and alone and like nobody would even notice if you vanished into thin air."~Canon compliant. Dear Evan Hansen told from Alana's perspective.





	Somebody To Find You

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this at 3am when I couldn't sleep. Also, Alana Beck deserves more recognition in this fandom.
> 
> Feel free to check out one of my other stories!!! Also, I promise Collateral Damage is not abandoned. I'm just currently super stressed with school.
> 
> Thanks y'all. Let me know what you think of this!!!!! Please feel free to leave a comment or message me on tumblr @connmanmurphy!

The first thing Alana does when she hears the news is open up Twitter. 

She checks Connor’s account. He only has 12 followers. No one from their school. He’s not following many people. The only tweets on his account are a few retweets from at least five years ago.

Still, Alana follows him and then refreshes his page and sees that he now has over a hundred followers. It makes her feel uneasy and she scrolls through his new followers. The names and faces of her classmates pop up. She clicks through their profiles. Some of them are talking about Connor. She drums her fingers against her laptop and then starts drafting a tweet.

_Still can’t believe the terrible news about @ConnorMurphy. I wouldn’t say that we were friends exactly. More like acquaintances. We were in chemistry together. He was also in my English class in tenth grade._

She stares at the drafted tweet and then deletes it. She starts writing again.

_Three days ago, Connor Murphy was here. And now. Now he’s gone._

She sends the tweet before she can think otherwise. It’s short, but Alana also thinks that maybe it means something. Maybe it means something to write down Connor Murphy’s name. Adults have been telling her for years that anything she puts online will stay there forever. Maybe it means something that she’s immortalizing Connor’s name forever on Twitter. At least that’s something she would want someone to do for her.

She starts drafting a reply to her first tweet, which already had twenty likes.

_If Connor meant something to you, please retweet. Or, private message me if you just wanna talk. At times like these, we can all use a friend._

She doesn’t really expect anyone to message her. Just like she wouldn’t message anyone else who is offering to be a shoulder to cry on. But Alana ran a pretty successful tumblr page back when she was 15 and always offered her ask box to people who needed to vent. She was used to offering herself up for the world.

A couple of girls from student council retweet her. A girl from her math class replies to the tweet with a few crying emojis.

Maybe it’s meaningless anyway.

~

School is weird for the next couple weeks. Teachers and guidance counselors make it their personal mission to connect with every student in the school and let them know they’re not alone. Their attempts to reach out feel empty.

Alana considers talking to her guidance counselor about Connor, but the second she steps into his office, he shuts the door and lets out a sigh of relief.

“Normally, my office is overflowing with seniors asking about the college process. It’s stressful, but I’d much prefer it to all this suicide talk,” he says with a chuckle.

He’s kidding. He must be kidding. Of course he’s kidding. But Alana gives herself half a second to feel defeated before thinking of a question about transcripts.

Logically, Alana knows that all the adults in her life would rather she confide in them that she’s feeling depressed. They would rather she talk about her feelings instead of suffering silently and then committing suicide. She knows that if she kills herself too, they would blame themselves.

She knows it would destroy her mom. She tries not to think about that.

So Alana goes to school and works on her college applications and tries to stop thinking about Connor Murphy and suicide, and the thought of Connor rotting in the ground at seventeen years old.

~

She hates thinking about Connor being dead. It makes her sick. She also hates that a tiny part of her brain wishes it were her instead. She thinks about what it would mean if she were dead. She hopes that people would be as torn up about her as they are about Connor. She would want people to remember her.

She sets up a memorial page for Connor on some free blogging website. She makes an intro post and adds an old profile picture she ripped from his facebook.

For a second, it feels like she’s invading. She didn’t really know Connor. They had a few classes together and did a few projects together over the years. He totally tanked their Huck Finn presentation back in 10th grade. For a second, she doesn’t feel any better than everyone else in her school. The people who she would see actively be mean to Connor are now claiming they miss him and that he died too soon.

Alana briefly thinks about Connor’s sister, Zoe. She’s talked to her maybe once or twice. Alana vaguely remembers that they’re in the same study hall this year. She hopes Zoe is okay.

~

Alana has English with Jared Kleinman, who happens to mention that Evan Hansen was best friends with Connor. He talks about how Connor used to take Evan to an abandoned apple orchard and they would spend hours together hanging out. He tells Alana that Evan broke his arm when he was climbing a tree with Connor. She remembers talking to Evan on the first day of school and asking about his arm, but she can’t remember if he told her how he broke it.

Connor’s name is the only signature on Evan’s cast.

Alana racks her brain and she can’t remember ever seeing Connor and Evan together, but then Jared mentions that they wanted to keep their friendship a secret and decided not to talk at school.

It sounds weird, but plausible. From what she’s noticed, Connor and Evan are pretty lonely people. They were always considered to be the weird kids.

Despite this, the whole school seems pretty torn up about Connor’s death. People are crying in the halls and at lunch and posting on social media about him. A few people started selling wristbands and shirts and buttons. Alana vaguely wonders where all the money is going.

~

Alana messages Evan on Facebook and asks about Connor. Evan takes a while to respond to each message. She passes on her condolences. She links him to the memorial page. Evan doesn’t reply.

~

The memorial page picks up some traction. Zoe is finally back at school, but she keeps to herself a lot. Alana knows this because she’s been trying to find ways to talk to Zoe, but she’s hard to track down.

It’s only been two weeks since Connor died, but people are already seemingly starting to forget him. It makes Alana feel sick. Connor can’t die like this. He can’t just fade away like he never even existed. He can’t just disappear. Even her memorial page for him is losing traffic by the day.

Because if Connor can disappear this easily, then what’s going to happen to her? What if Alana kills herself and there’s no one to even try to get people to remember her?

She messages Evan again. She feels desperate. Surely Connor’s best friend won’t want to let him die. But Evan doesn’t seem that enthusiastic. He seems small and unsure.

~

Things start to go back to normal. Except now Alana feels more pressure to put on a happy face. Her parents, both lawyers, are already hounding her about her plans for after college.

Because obviously she’s going to study pre-law at Stanford or Columbia, but that’s a given. What’s next? Where is she applying to grad school? Is she going to take any time off and get in some experience at a firm? Is she staying on the east coast or is she moving out west?

Her parents are asking her about this at dinner. Well, it’s more like they’re asking each other and discussing the pros and cons. She’s just sitting in the middle of them staring at her food.

They haven’t asked her about Connor. Alana knows for a fact that the school sent out an email, but they don’t bring it up.

Her mom’s brother committed suicide when he was fifteen. She found out from her grandfather this summer when he got really drunk a few days after her grandmother’s funeral. No one ever mentions it. Her parents don’t even acknowledge the fact that her mom once had an older brother. And Alana’s smart enough to not bring it up.

Suicide isn’t socially acceptable in the Beck household.

~

Evan finds her in the hallway at school a few days later. He starts talking about an idea he had. The Connor Project. A student group dedicated to keeping Connor’s memory alive. Dedicated to showing that everyone is important. Everyone matters. No one deserves to disappear.

Alana wants to cry when she looks through the pamphlet Evan made. She feels hopeful. She immediately makes her and Evan co-presidents. She watches the way his face twitches when she says it, and she knows she’s being obnoxious. She knows she’s butting in where she doesn’t belong. But she doesn’t care and she keeps talking. She makes plans with Evan and Jared to bring this to the Murphy’s and holding a school assembly to bring awareness. To remember Connor.

~

The Murphy’s love it. Especially Connor’s mom. She looks as hopeful as Alana feels. It makes Alana feel good. Like maybe she really is making a change. Sure, she’s immortalizing a seventeen-year-old dead kid she never knew, but at least he won’t be forgotten.

~

Alana doesn’t expect The Connor Project to go viral. She recorded the speech Evan gave at the assembly. It was beautiful, even if he did stumble over his words and drop his notecards at the beginning.

She rewatches the recording of his speech a dozen times before putting it online. It made her cry each time. She thinks about how ironic it is that with all this attention, she still doesn’t feel seen.

She wonders what Connor would think of all this. She kind of wishes he were here. Mrs. Murphy tells her a lot of stories. Good stories. Stories from when Connor was little. When he was a funny kid who would read a lot and tell knock knock jokes. She tells stories of him and Zoe at the orchard that he and Evan would visit.

Alana feels like she’s invading. She wasn’t a part of Connor’s family. She wasn’t Connor’s best friend. She’s just some lonely, invisible girl who’s afraid of disappearing. She wonders if Connor was afraid of disappearing. She hopes he would appreciate their efforts to keep him alive.

~

Alana starts to feel the pressure after they launch the kickstarter.

The Connor Project now has well over 50,000 followers. They have a few students helping out with the website and social media. Each week, The Connor Project meets after school and whoever wants to can stop by and share how they’ve been feeling that week.

Alana wants to do something when all the attention is still on them. Evan doesn’t have any ideas, but Alana comes up with the idea to rebuild the orchard. Give life to a place that Connor loved. A place that was the background of his and Evan’s friendship. A place that meant so much to the Murphy’s that Mrs. Murphy started to cry when Alana presented her idea.

~

Alana feels good about things. Hopeful. It’s almost November. She’s sent in a bunch of early action applications. She has people coming up to her in the hallway every single day. Some of them want to ask about The Connor Project. Some of them just want to talk. But the attention feels good and Alana feels more seen than she has in a while.

~

They have a week until the deadline and they still need to raise $17,000. Alana doesn’t start to feel that stressed until she starts picking up on the fact that Evan is slacking. He’s started dating Zoe recently (Alana doesn’t even want to unpack why she has a lot of feelings about that) and Jared isn’t any help either.

She feels bad about pushing Evan because it’s clear that he’s suffering from some mental health stuff too, but Alana’s getting desperate. Evan has been blowing her off.

Mrs. Murphy sends her some of Connor and Evan’s emails, and Alana immediately puts them on the website. She doesn’t think much of it. A few people comment and point out things in the emails that don’t make sense. Alana comes up with a list of questions for Evan, and approaches him at school about it. He seems nervous and agitated.

But then Alana really goes back through the emails. She reads them carefully. If Evan got his cast off in late September, why did he tell the Murphy’s that he broke his arm three months before that? Why does he tell everyone that the first time they went to the orchard he broke his arm, and also say that they’ve been going there since last November?

Why does Connor seem to be getting better in the emails, and still kill himself?

Alana’s confused. And angry. The kickstarter deadline is fast approaching and Evan doesn’t seem to care at all.

Alana confronts him at school and he yells at her. She’s almost impressed considering Evan seems way too anxious to ever yell at someone.

He asks why she even cares about Connor since she didn’t know him.

And that makes Alana even angrier. She sees herself in Connor. She could have been Connor. She could have been that kid who kills themselves and is left to rot in the ground forgotten and alone.

So she admits for the first time out loud that she feels invisible and alone. And then she goes to her next class and sits in the front row and talks to the people around her and still feels really fucking invisible.

Maybe she and Connor really are similar. Maybe she should have befriended Connor when he was still alive.

Alana goes home at the end of the day and immediately climbs into bed. She’s thankful it’s a Friday and she doesn’t have to think about school for the next two days.

She doesn’t have to. But she will. And her parents will ask her about it. And she’ll incessantly check her college applications. She can’t take a break, even if she wants to, because a break will just give her more anxiety. The idea of doing nothing kills her. She has to be doing something. She has to be leaving some type of mark on the world, and she can’t do that if she’s lying in bed.

She starts thinking about Evan again and looks through the emails and it leaves her feeling frustrated. She thinks back to the beginning of The Connor Project. When she first created the site and asked Evan for a selfie of him and Connor.

“What?” Evan had asked.

Alana shrugged. “I think it would be powerful to have a picture of you two somewhere on the website.”

Evan’s hands were shaking. “I just, I, um, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want my, um, picture online. You know? But, yeah, um, I’ll look. I guess.”

Alana accepted it at the time. Evan has anxiety. He had just lost his best friend.

She reads through the emails. It’s like each time she reads them, she finds another mistake.

Evan calls her. She picks up immediately.

He starts apologizing over and over. He claims he’s ready to really rededicate himself to the project and the kickstarter.

But Alana’s tired. She’s sick of this. She can do it herself. She doesn’t need him weighing her down. Especially when he can’t even get his story straight. She calls him out on this.

Evan seems desperate.

But so is Alana.

“If we weren’t friends, then why did he write his suicide note to me?”

“Oh my god.”

“Do you believe me now?”

Her heart is racing. She almost can’t believe what she’s seeing on the screen. Some of the most incredibly hopeless words she’s ever read. Words she identifies with the second she reads them.

_This isn’t going to be an amazing year because why would it be?_

_I wish that everything was different. I wish I were a part of something. I wish what I said mattered to anybody._

_I mean, face it, would anyone even notice if I just disappeared tomorrow?_

She puts it online immediately. She doesn’t even think. People need to see this. It’s important. People need to read a dead boy’s last words to the world.

Because maybe they’ll read Connor’s words and they’ll donate to the kickstarter and then Alana can help build the new orchard. She can be partially responsible for the Connor Murphy Memorial Orchard. She can be the reason Connor’s name will live on forever through an apple orchard.

She can’t let Connor disappear or fade away because if he dies then she dies. If Connor dies, then she might as well disappear.

“You need to take it down! Please! It doesn’t belong to you!”

Alana doesn’t even hear Evan yelling because the $17,000 is already decreasing. She’s doing this for Connor. She’s doing this for herself. She’s doing this for all the people in this world who feel alone and hopeless and invisible.

“Don’t you care about building the orchard? This is the best way to make Connor’s dream come true!”

“No, it’s not!”

Alana hangs up after that. She just keeps refreshing the kickstarter page over and over and over. She refreshes twitter. People are donating, but they’re writing hurtful things about the Murphy’s. They’re blaming Connor’s death on his family. The things people are saying are disgusting and they make Alana feel sick. She closes twitter and keeps refreshing the kickstarter page until they surpass their goal a few hours later.

She then shuts her laptop and goes to the bathroom and takes a shower. She throws up in the shower and then cries and punches the wall a few times until her hand aches.

~

Evan and Jared resign from The Connor Project a few days later. Alana visits the Murphy’s household one last time and apologizes to Mrs. Murphy for publishing Connor’s letter online. She says that she knows she had no right to do that and she was desperate, but that is not an excuse and she’s sorry. Mrs. Murphy is quiet for a while, but eventually forgives her.

“You don’t have to forgive me. It was completely unacceptable for me to post it online. I shouldn’t have even been allowed to read it in the first place,” Alana says.

Mrs. Murphy lets out a deep sigh. She doesn’t say anything for a few moments and just stares at Alana. “Were you friends with Connor?”

Alana looks at the ground and feels tears in her eyes. She thinks about mentioning that Connor was an acquaintance. But that’s a lie. She thinks back to sixth grade when she and Connor used to eat lunch together sometimes. That doesn’t mean she knew him. “No. I don’t think I even spoke with him since the middle of junior year.”

Mrs. Murphy is quiet. She nods and looks away. She looks broken, but in a different way than before.

“I just hated the idea of him being forgotten,” Alana says. Desperate. Like maybe this will make up for. Something. Alana isn’t even really sure what her goal is. She just wants to ease the pain. “I know that I wouldn’t have wanted to disappear like that.”

Mrs. Murphy rests a hand on Alana’s shoulder. She looks pained. “Thank you.”

Alana stays for a little longer, but she leaves before she can run into Zoe. She knows that Evan and Zoe broke up, but she doesn’t know why.

Maybe it’s for the best. It always seemed a little fishy to her that Evan was dating his dead best friend’s sister.

~

She finishes out the school year strong. She doesn’t see Evan all that much. They don’t have any classes together. But Jared is really nice to her in their shared English class. He tells her dumb jokes and asks her genuine questions about college.

Alana doesn’t try talking to Zoe anymore. They still have study hall together, but Zoe sits on the opposite side of the room and keeps her headphones in at all times. Alana catches her eye every so often and Zoe stares at her for a minute before looking away.

~

She gets accepted into every school she applies to and decides to go to Columbia. She remembers Mrs. Murphy mentioning that Connor really wanted to go to college in New York City.

And maybe it’s dumb to base her college decision off her dead classmate. Her dead classmate who was supposed to turn eighteen months ago, but will forever be seventeen.

Maybe Alana can try living for him.

~

Graduation is emotional. There’s a moment of silence for Connor. And when the students are marching across stage to receive their diplomas, they still call Connor’s name. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy are lead onto the stage and given Connor’s diploma.

A really cynical part of Alana’s brain finds it funny that they still made a diploma for Connor even though he didn’t finish high school. She wonders what his parents will do with it.

She looks at the bleachers and finds Zoe in the crowd.

She runs into Evan and Jared after they throw their caps. Evan freezes when he sees her, but Alana hugs both of them. She thinks that maybe they need it.

~

The orchard opens a few weeks later. Alana drives over one morning to check it out. She walks around the fields for a while and thinks about Connor. Thinks about Evan. Thinks about them climbing trees together here and lying in the field together.

She still never got any answers from Evan about the inconsistent emails, but she decides not to push it. It isn’t her place. Maybe it never was. But it’s still nice to imagine that Connor was once happy, and that he had a best friend he would climb trees with.

One of the benches has a plaque for Connor.

Alana sits for a while and takes in the view. Her heart hurts, but at least she did something. She’s responsible for the orchard. She did a lot of bad things too and didn’t always have the best intentions, but she saved Connor from being forgotten.

Connor’s dead, but he isn’t gone. Because of her, his name won’t disappear. This is his mark on the world, but it’s also hers too. And that fills her with hope.


End file.
